JCB Pioneer: Mars now available worldwide

Mars exploration game finally releases in NA

Liverpool based indie developer Atomicom announced yesterday that their game JCB Pioneer: Mars has finally released in North America on Nintendo Switch. For those in the EU and Australia, the game has been available since mid-December 2018.

The sandbox survival game has been available on Steam in early access since 2017 and the developers have found the player feedback to be extremely useful in creating the Nintendo Switch version of the game. Tamsyn Hastings, a designer at Atomicom, has said that she hopes that the improvements they have made will give players a more fulfilling experience:

“We’ve made drastic improvements across the board; refining playability and in game experiences, implementing new explorable areas and mechanics which allow us to show more game depth than the original early access release.”

JCB Pioneer: Mars is set many years in the future and you are part of a mission to colonize Mars. You have been sent on ahead to get habitation and mining processes underway. However, upon attempting to land, there is an incident which causes your shuttle to crash-land. Wreckage from the crash has been spread out over the surface of the red planet. With the help of some high-tech futuristic vehicles developed by industry giant JCB, the first thing you need to do is to build a sustainable living facility and learn to survive in the harsh environment you’ve found yourself in.

Developers have worked closely with the design team at JCB to help bring about a vision for the future of space colonisation. From buggies to traverse the unforgiving landscape to mining and heavy construction vehicles to help with terraforming Mars in the future.

The game is still in early access on Steam but is also available now for Nintendo Switch priced at £19.99 / €22.19 / $24.99.